Poulsbo woman gets 4 years for drunken-driving death

PORT ORCHARD - The hardest part of her mother's death, Jackie Blomker said, was telling her own child that her grandmother "was in heaven now."

Blomker's mother, 50-year-old Jenna Carp of Bremerton, was killed in a December 2011 head-on drunken driving crash on Highway 305.

"I just wish, for one last time, I could tell her how much she means to me," Blomker said of Carp.

On Wednesday morning, the driver responsible for Carp's death — as well as the near-death of the man riding in the same car as Carp — was sentenced to four years in prison.

Kim Marie Yeager, found by the Washington State Patrol to have a 0.15 blood alcohol level after her Hyundai Sonata struck head on the car carrying Carp and Michael Eischen, pleaded guilty earlier this month to a count of vehicular homicide and a count of vehicular assault.

Kitsap County Deputy Prosecutor Justin Zaug characterized the crash at Yeager's sentencing as "one of those … drunk driving cases that we all fear." He acknowledged Yeager had taken responsibility soon after she'd been charged but said that alcoholism provided her no excuse.

"As a crime without malicious intent, this is about as bad as it gets," he said.

Yeager faced between 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 years in prison Wednesday, with Kitsap County prosecutors and the defendant's attorney recommending the four-year term that Kitsap County Superior Court Judge Sally F. Olsen settled on.

Olsen acknowledged the disease of alcoholism and its role in the crash, but said Yeager was still responsible for her conduct in what she called an "incomprehensible and horrific tragedy."

"You will live with this punishment for the rest of your life," the judge said.

She urged Yeager to "devote" her life to preventing future such tragedies, including contributing to victim-impact panels.

Eischen, of Port Orchard, told the judge he not only lost the love of his life in Carp, but nearly was killed himself. He suffered many broken bones, endured at least seven surgeries and had to relearn how to walk, though he cannot do so the way he once did.

He saw the four-year sentence as "nothing more than a slap on the wrist" and could not fathom Yeager's actions the day of the crash.

"I didn't even know her," he told the judge. "But she needs to pay for what she's done."

Cory Jo Grey, another of Carp's daughters, said the 50-year-old should've been in the delivery room at the hospital when she recently gave birth to her own child. She called Carp "my greatest hero."

"I've lost a part of me," she said.

The crash was the tragic culmination of other accidents that happened when she'd gotten behind the wheel that day. The Washington State Patrol says she sideswiped a Ford Explorer on Highway 305 and took out a bank of mailboxes on Ferncliff Avenue on Bainbridge Island before the fatal collision.

Michele Taylor, Yeager's attorney, said her client was remorseful and will have to pay an "extreme amount" of restitution in the case. She noted that nothing could take back what has been lost.

"No matter what she does … it will never, ever make up for what happened," she said.

Yeager, who cried throughout the sentencing hearing, got her own chance to apologize.

"I'm so sorry for the heartbreak and sorrow I've caused each of you," she said.